Budget cooking: flavorful failure at fancy food

So I tried to be fancy tonight. Usually a bust. It tasted good, didn't look terrible, and, perhaps most importantly, was inexpensive, tasty, and fun. 

I actually tried to sketch out my plan ahead of time. Please note that I am not gifted in the realm of visual arts. The basic idea was thinly sliced chicken breast arrayed in a semicircle across the bottom of a square plate, some lentils mixed with green bell pepper spooned across the top of the plate in an arc, and a sizable dollop of mashed sweet potato piped into the middle with a ridged shape and a parsley leaf on top.

I started off by simmering my red lentils in salted water for about 4-5 minutes. After those were removed (right), I refilled the pot with water, got it boiling, added salt, and tossed in half of a sweet potato cut into cubes (left).

While the potato cooked away, I went ahead and presliced my chicken breast. Looks like a plate of oddly-colored sashimi, right? Only if you want fucking salmonella. I seasoned it all with salt, pepper, and paprika (which was my main mistake of the evening). I kept the skin and fat off to the side and chopped it up to mix with the lentils later.

I pan fried the chicken slices in butter and olive oil, as per usual. Because of how many slices there were, I had to do it in batches, which ended up with me having a few colder pieces later on (my second mistake of the evening). 

While the chicken was still going, the potatoes finished, so I drained them and tossed the cubes back into the hot pot. I added a little cream and butter (intentionally putting a little more than I normally would) to help it all mash into a smooth, thick texture.

The mashing went really well. When it's all said and done, the sweet potato was perfect as hell. If you're doing this, just season to taste with salt and pepper. Don't put too much pepper in, though, unless you're wanting to have it be speckled black on the plate. In hindsight, that might look pretty fuckin baller. I'll try that next time.

Once the chicken was done, I dumped the fat and skin into the same pan and let it start spitting fucking butter and oil all over my forearms.

I tossed in some minced onion and sliced garlic and let that all start sweating a little bit before I added a couple splashes of white wine to clean the tasty brown off the bottom of the pan.

Once the wine was juuuust starting to simmer, I dropped in some diced green bell pepper and mushroom. I got that all mixed around, seasoned a little with salt, and let it cook for...maybe 3-4 minutes? I wanted the pepper cooked, but still with some crunch.

Finally, I dumped the lentils in, added a tablespoon or so of butter, and got it all mixed in and heated up together. 

As for the plating, I kind of succeeded, I guess? I ended up not quite getting the chicken to lie like I wanted it to, the lentils did okay (and thank God for the green in there), and the sweet potato ended up looking like a softserve dog turd with a leaf on top. It tasted great, but seasoning the chicken with paprika, while yummy, made everything pretty much the same color. Next time I try this, I'll have to change up that seasoning choice. I'll probably also do something a little different with the potato, as well as adding some more color variety to the lentils, maybe some red cabbage to add some depth? I don't know, I'm just using words I hear fancy people use.

Or, if I'm going to stick with sweet potatoes, I can do something besides lentils so the base color is different. Perhaps some creamed spinach formed in a cylinder in the corner, the sweet potato piped into a small tower placed diagonally halfway across the plate, some dotted balsamic between them, and my protein...something darker in color, like steak, maybe with some feta or something on top? Yeah, that can go in the parallel corner to the spinach. Maybe just do the balsamic dotting the plate haphazardly while the three food items draw attention back and forth. If I'm going to be having the feta with the steak, I may toss some Kalamata olives into the spinach, as well. Maybe some capers in the potato? Either way, the balsamic will help balance that flavor out. Fuuuuck... maybe next month sometime. 

Why so long? 

We 'boutta start some chitlin experiments, fuckers!